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posted by cmn32480 on Friday August 07 2015, @07:59AM   Printer-friendly
from the subsurface-tsumani dept.

A group of scientists from the University of Miami have been tracking waves of a different breed – unseen colossal, skyscraper-tall underwater waves that are present in every one of our oceans.

Subsurface waves, otherwise known as internal waves (IW) are initiated by the effects of Earth's gravity, and rarely ever break the surface. To understand an IW, imagine separating the ocean into layers of water that get denser and denser as you go farther down. An IW is like a surface wave that occurs on one of the lower strata of the ocean levels.

Internal waves move much slower than their exterior counterparts, and whilst the height of the surface ocean remains essentially unaffected, the water layers beneath rise and fall dramatically as these waves pass by.

There's so much energy in those oceans. If the engineering challenges could be overcome tapping the currents, tides, and waves like these could solve a big chunk of mankind's demand for power.

takyon: University of Miami source.


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Gravis on Friday August 07 2015, @08:55AM

    by Gravis (4596) on Friday August 07 2015, @08:55AM (#219479)

    There's so much energy in those oceans. If the engineering challenges could be overcome tapping the currents, tides, and waves like these could solve a big chunk of mankind's demand for power.

    dont fuck with the oceans, we aren't doing a good job on land, why do you think we would do better in water? besides, we already have the solution to our power problems and it's been bombarding Earth with free power since there was an Earth.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2015, @11:14AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2015, @11:14AM (#219508)

    Your point about the hubris we've shown is well taken.

    we already have the solution to our power problems and it's been bombarding Earth with free power since there was an Earth.

    Collecting energy from lightning is far from a mature technology, and even if it were 100% efficient, it could only supply around 4 * 1017 joules per year[1], whereas human activities, including inefficiencies, use around 6 * 1020 joules per year.[2]

    If you meant cosmic rays or the solar wind, those energy sources are even farther from practicability, in my opinion.

    [1] http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2012/05/could-we-harness-lightning-as-an-energy-source.html [realclearscience.com]

    [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption [wikipedia.org]

    • (Score: 1) by deathlyslow on Friday August 07 2015, @11:52AM

      by deathlyslow (2818) <wmasmith@gmail.com> on Friday August 07 2015, @11:52AM (#219520)

      You didn't get the bolded part of the solution. He was referring to solar energy. You know PV....

      • (Score: 2) by Gravis on Saturday August 08 2015, @05:36AM

        by Gravis (4596) on Saturday August 08 2015, @05:36AM (#219804)

        You didn't get the bolded part of the solution. He was referring to solar energy.

        more specifically, i was referring to Sol [wikipedia.org] because that's the name of our star.

        wikipedia:

        The Latin name for the Sun, Sol, is widely known but is not common in general English language use; the adjectival form is the related word solar

        • (Score: 1) by deathlyslow on Saturday August 08 2015, @05:03PM

          by deathlyslow (2818) <wmasmith@gmail.com> on Saturday August 08 2015, @05:03PM (#219916)

          Isn't it pretty much a given that we would know that? Especially around here? By and large we are a pretty smart group. Not too bright at times but overall smart.

  • (Score: 2) by Zinho on Friday August 07 2015, @04:38PM

    by Zinho (759) on Friday August 07 2015, @04:38PM (#219622)

    we already have the solution to our power problems and it's been bombarding Earth with free power since there was an Earth.

    Solar power is not free. There are significant capital costs associated with harvesting solar energy because it's not in a convenient form. The problem is that while it's dumping a bunch of energy onto the planet constantly, the energy is applied fairly uniformly at the human scale; that doesn't leave much opportunity to use it in a thermodynamic cycle [wikipedia.org] the way we prefer to for turning dynamos. Heat engines need both a heat source and a heat sink; if they're both getting heated at the same time by the same source they your efficiency is going to be horrible.

    I'll admit, photovoltaic cells are a great way to get around that. Through the miracle of quantum physics we can avoid the heat engine problems and directly harvest electromotive force from the electromagnetic radiation from the sun. I'm looking forward to the day that the material, shipping, installation, and maintenance costs for a bank of solar cells reaches parity with burning fossil fuels to boil water. Today is not that day.

    Back on topic for the article, the heat engine approach actually isn't bad as a way to harvest solar energy. Scale is an issue, since what you really want is a heat collector at the equator and heat sinks at the poles; fortunately, we don't need planetary-scale infrastructure projects to accomplish this. Wind forced between lower and higher latitudes by solar input is named The Hadley system [wikipedia.org], and is considered to be a heat engine converting solar radiation to kinetic energy in the atmosphere. Humanity has been taking advantage of this method to harvest solar energy since the dawn of invention. [wikipedia.org] Ocean currents are also a heat engine driven by solar energy input, and are an even larger potential source of harvestable energy; little obstacles like corrosive environment and high pressure at depth have made the engineering for it difficult, but the large amount of energy circulating in that system remains very attractive. Still not free, still not at cost parity with burning fossil fuels in most places, but well understood and already part of the plan to switch away from non-renewable fuels.

    TL;DR version - people looking to provide power to the world aren't ignoring solar energy, they are desperately trying to work around the inconvenient form it comes in. Wind and ocean current/wave power is solar power, with the hard planet-scale infrastructure already provided for free. Please don't write off ocean power just because it isn't direct solar collection.

    Also, please stop suggesting that solar is an obvious, free solution to the energy problem. While you may find the snark amusing, calling solar a free solution just because we don't have to pay for the heat/light from the sun is plain wrong. If you don't understand why, then I hope one day your parents do give you a pony for your birthday, and afterwards leave you on the hook to pay for its feed, housing, riding gear, and medical.

    --
    "Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2015, @07:26AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2015, @07:26AM (#221151)

      Solar power is like buying a pony, but never having to pay for its food.